Month: June 2017

The return trip from Chicago also involved airport food, and the breakfast English muffin sandwich was probably the worst airport food I’ve ever had. Muffin not toasted and dry, an overcooked egg, spare overcooked bacon and boring cheese does not make for a satisfying meal for $6.53 with tax.

Dinner

Home again and back to real food, with a pork scallopini piccata based on a chicken version served with buttered spinach and white rice (to soak up all that delicious piccata sauce).

The pork scallopini was $11.19 or $5.60 per serve

Baby spinach was $2.69 but we used half, or 68c per serve

Rice adds 33c per serve

A bag of Meyer lemons out $3.99 and we used half, or $1.00 per serve

Chicken stock adds 14c per serve

Add 10c for capers and parsley

Cultured salted butter is $2.99 per 8oz block, and six tablespoons is half the block or 75c per serve.

Tonight’s dinner was very tasty, particularly because of the piccata sauce, and cost $8.60 per serve.

Burbank Monday time so another trip to In and Out Burger for a Double Double animal style, $4.08.

Dinner

Time to finish last week’s supermarket chicken, although this one from Jon’s is a cut above those from Ralph’s! We paired it with a BBQ Ranch salad kit from Ralph’s for a quick and easy Monday night meal.

The chicken leg (thigh and drumstick) is $1.75 per serve

The salad kit is $3.50 but makes four serves, or 88c per serve.

Tonight’s meal was on the table in under five minutes and the salad was pretty tasty. All in all a good Monday night meal for $2.63 per serve.

What is Sunday brunch without eggs? Put them on a ‘quesadilla’ and they’re especially good. Today we used quesadilla cheese, but it didn’t seem to make much difference to the taste.

One flatbread (half of two) costs 50c a serve

Half a can of refried beans, shared across two halves: 26c

A generous splash of spicy sauce is 15c per serve

Quesadilla cheese is $2.69 for 8oz and we used 2oz, split between two is 34c per serve

Two eggs each adds $1.00 per serve.

Lunch today was satisfying for $2.25 per serve

Dinner

Our meat box once again had a Boston Butt included so pulled pork it is! Paired with Esquites (Mexican corn salad) and white rice to absorb the run-off from the pork. Yum.

The boston but is heavily marbled with fat, which becomes an unctuous sauce with the other ingredients.

At $20.32 for just over 2 lbs it makes at least six good serves, or $3.37 per serve

Onion and garlic for the pork adds 25c per serve

Chicken stock adds 14c per serve

White rice adds 35c per serve

For the corn we used Trader Joes Fire Roasted frozen corn to get grill flavor, which cost $2.49 for a pound, and we used half a packet for three serves, or 42c per serve

Cotija cheese is probably the most important ingredient in the esquites and fortunately this time we found some at our local Ralph’s supermarket for $3.99 for 8oz, and we used about 1/4 or 33c per serve.

1 lb of limes we $1.29 and we used 1/6 or 5c per serve

Add 30c for seasoning and oil

Add 30c for the pickled onion.

Dinner tonight was excellent for $5.16. The esquites were definitely better with cotija and perfect with the pulled pork and rice.

Continuing our experiments with making two different sandwiches and sharing them, and exploring new sandwich combinations. Today’s combination were “egg salad” with watercress and pastrami with mustard.

The sprouted wholemeal is $3.49 a loaf with 18 slices, or 39c per two slice sandwich

The sliced pastrami is $4.99 per pack, but we’ll get three sandwiches from that, or 83c per serve

Mustard adds 5c per serve

Pastured eggs are 50c each and we used labné instead of mayonnaise to create enough to make two sandwiches, or 25c per serve

Watercress adds 5c per serve.

The sandwiches today were interesting, although we overdid the labné in the egg a little. Lunch today cost $2.07 with good variety.

Dinner

A continuing streak of hot weather swings the balance in favor of cold salads, again. It’s somewhat challenging to find a variety of salads that aren’t “another leafy green salad.” Tonight’s contender is a Greek style tuna salad, for which we had reasonably low expectations.

A can of yellowfin tuna costs $2.29 and we averaged one each serve

Persian cucumber cost 35c or 17c per serve

A bell pepper is 99c or 50c per serve

Tomatoes were $2.79 and we used about half, or 70c per serve

Pitted olives come in $2.99 jars and one quarter was used, or 25c per serve

1 lb of limes we $1.29 and we used 1/4 or 17c per serve

Add 25c for the seasonings.

This salad exceeded our expectations. It was much more tasty than the simple ingredients would suggest and it comes in at $4.33 per serve.